


運命のファルファラ - Farfalla Of Fate.

by Sechzehn



Category: Steins;Gate
Genre: F/M, Feels, This is basically a collection of AUs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-04-17 22:48:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14199312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sechzehn/pseuds/Sechzehn
Summary: No matter what worldline they're in, Okabe Rintarou and Makise Kurisu are destined to meet and fall in love with each other.#1 - Cooking!AU - A matter of responsibilities ~ Okabe and Kurisu are working in a luxurious restaurant in Tokyo.#2 - Your Name.!AU - What is your name? ~ Okabe Rintarō and Makise Kurisu's lives take a weird turn when they start swapping bodies with a complete stranger. What could it mean?





	1. A  Matter Of Responsibilities.

**Author's Note:**

> Translating this collection wasn't in my plans, originally, since the stories were too long for a potato like me to translate properly. I still have a lot of issues in finding the right phrasing for some sentences, so you have to thank the huge work that my beta reader [Cross-Flame](https://m.fanfiction.net/u/4586114/Crecelia) did (polishing this 4000- words wall of text and transforming it in something readable).  
> I don't know how many chapters this collection will have, I have two other stories (way longer than this) that are waiting to be polished, but I'm very slow and very busy so I can't say how much time the whole process will take.
> 
> So... Yeah, here are my beloved idiots being even more idiotic than usual. Enjoy!

Kurisu Makise had never thought of herself as genius but, without a shadow of doubt, had great confidence in her abilities. Many had praised her precocious culinary talent and believed that by applying for a job at May Queen, a luxurious restaurant in the most luxurious district of Tokyo, she could crown her dream of becoming an apprentice of the legendary Chef Tennoji, the chief advocate of the fame of that place.

Certainly, however, she didn’t expect to be thrown into the role of a waitress. Or rather, she was perfectly aware of the fact that, to get to the top, she would have to rise up from the bottom. For that very reason occupying the role of the scullery maid would have beenfine if her boss wasn’t him.

Suzuki Kōichi, best known as “Shidō” among the restaurant's employees, was an half-thug son of the director who had fun treating his employees - and not only them - as puppets just for the sake of feeling superior. He was her supervisor, and, since she had set foot on May Queen as a waitress, he had done nothing but hit on her. Yet, even though the poor Kurisu tried to refuse his advances with caution so as to not to lose her job after just two months, but he still didn’t seem to understand how his chances were less than zero.

And now she was there, sitting on an upside down bucket in the street at the back of the restaurant, exhausted both mentally and physically. It had been a particularly heavy day, an important culinary critic had been their guest and the amount of work had almost doubled before Kurisu could even have the time to prepare herself mentally.  
The only consolation in that short pause was the beautiful late spring day that had welcomed her outside; she closed her eyes under the warm rays of the sun and the clear sky and felt the stress of that morning partially slipping away. 

When she opened her eyes, her gaze was captured by a beautiful blue butterfly fluttering around a cherry tree in the backyard park. She had never seen one of such a brilliant color, and though she wasn’t much of superstitious person, she allowed herself to think of it as a good omen.

"So that’s where you were, sweetie."

Kurisu Makise found herself suppressing, for the second time that day, the desire to roll her eyes. After taking a deep breath she turned towards the source of the voice, striving to use the politest voice she could muster. "How can I help you, Shidō-san?"

The boy with oxygenated hair and dark complexion (which apparently was the result of an intense session on the tanning bed), approached her with a mellifluous smile. "You worked well today. You know, I was thinking about ending your shift a little earlier today, so we can go out and spend some quality time, just the two of us.. if you understand what I mean. "

Kurisu felt a chill rushing down her spine and had to use her whole willpower to suppress an expression of sincere disgust whens she heard the boy's hand tightening on her shoulder. She had to find an excuse to refuse without losing her job, and quickly.

"I’m honored by your invitation, but if I must say the truth... The truth is that I can’t accept."

"You can’t?" Shidō asked with such evident disappointment that made her look like she refused a very magnanimous offer.

Perfect. It was beautiful until it lasted. She just had to be fired with dignity. "Well, that's... I'm... I already have a boyfriend and-"

"Hey, they're looking for you in the kitchen."

The fault was of her survival instinct. She remembered studying it during her biology lessons at school. Humans were animals and, as such, they were able to do almost involuntary actions in order to secure their survival. She jumped up and grabbed the arm of the boy who had suddenly crossed the kitchen door, pulling out her widest smile.

"The truth is, Okabe-san is my boyfriend, and we scheduled a date after work today!"

§

"Are you out of your _mind_ !?"

Kurisu Makise wanted to bury herself into the depths of hell just to get back to the surface only after forgetting what had just happened. Okabe Rintarō, a colleague a year and a half older than her, had found himself in the wrong place at the right time and had ended up becoming, at least publicly, her boyfriend.

 

It was only a temporary measure, she clarified. They just had to pretend to be together when Shido watched them, and in return, she promised she’d put a good word for him when her upcoming chef's promotion had come true. It was a simple work contract.

 

"For once we both agree, it's an absurdity. But that’s why it could work", she explained as they walked out of the room, far from indiscreet ears.

Okabe, in reply, gave her a cocky smile. "Well, Christina, the undersigned Hōōin Kyōma will grant you his help from the height of his great magnanimity, so try to be grateful."

Kurisu suppressed with immense patience the urge to punch him. Okabe Rintarō was a walking perch with a very difficult personality to handle, with his fixation on various conspiracies and his “mad scientist" attitude.

"Yeah yeah, sure. I am oh so deeply grateful, Hōōin-san”, she cut short before losing that bit of patience left over. "Anyway, why are you accompanying me to the station?"

"The Organization might be planning its next mo- Okay, sorry", he hastened to say, terrified by the girl's deadly glance. "A gentleman must escort his lady, right, Christina?"

"... Idiot. And remember that there is no "tina"! “.

§

The next ten days were something very similar to paradise, assuming such a place existed. The news that Kurisu was sentimentally engaged shook Shidō enough to keep him away during the working hours.

With her main kicker outside the boxes, she was able to completely immerse herself in her job and the promotion to assistant chef became a tangible reality: when she was not too busy with cooking she could look closely at how Tennoji prepared his dishes and get important tips on how to improve her own. She was certain that over time, everyone in that kitchen would realize her talent.

"If you cook fish this way you will avoid getting a gummy texture, Tennoji-san told me."

"Ah, thank you, Makise-san."

"Well, I see that being close to chef Tennoji is bearing fruit, baby." Shidō's voice, too close to her ears, caused her such a wave of disgust that she almost dropped the frying pan with the fish she had cooked with so much effort. "And it seems to me that your boyfriend has not complimented you as he should. Let me offer you something to drink after work to celebrate."

§

"Won’t you help her, Kyōma-nyan?". Faris, the most popular maid of the May Queen, and his only friend inside that kitchen, gave him a look full of disappointment while watching Shido and Kurisu’s exchange from the back. "Shido-nyan will begin to doubt your farce if you don’t do anything!"

"Uh, you say I should help her?"

"It seems obvious to me, nya! Any boy should show a bit of jealousy if someone is hitting on his girlfriend!" 

Okabe gave her a look that made his absolute incapacity of comprehending the situation clear as daylight. "Nyaaa, I’m not surprised you never had a girlfriend, Kyōma-nyan. Nyow go and do something to pull that poor girl out of trouble."

Following the advice from the maid with the weird cat-like talk, he approached Kurisu, who was still busy trying to come up with excuses, and without thinking too much about Shidō's presence, he passed his arm around her waist, holding her thin figure against his side. His “girlfriend” turned towards him as if she had just seen a ghost before before flashing an unsettling smile in his direction as he pulled her into a loving hug, holding her tight against his chest and kissing the top of her head. It was one thing he had seen in one of the dramas that Mayuri, his best friend, was so fond of and hoped that it would be enough to force Shidō into surrender.

"Hey, we were in the middle of an important conversation, here!"

"Oh, sorry man, but I just knew about the promotion of Chris-," Okabe stopped dead in his tracks. He wasn’t by any means an expert about dating, but his common sense was strongly suggesting him not use weird nicknames in front of the very person they needed to fool. Not to mention the fact that Kurisu would very likely chop his head off if he called her like that in front of Shidō. “-I mean, my girlfriend, so I rushed here to congratulate."

Kurisu, still pressed against his chest in a wild mass of chestnut hair, glared at him with the intensity of a thousand suns. Okabe, who was just beginning to realize that he had done a rather embarrassing gesture in front of the staff of the kitchen, bent over her, whispering in her ear to play his game if she wanted her strategy to work.

"A-ah, d-dear! What a sweet thought you had! Y-you shouldn’t have troubled yourself so much, I was just about to ask you to go out together at the end of the shift! " He heard her say, her face beet red and a creepingly tight smile plastered on her face.

Shido stared at them for a long, infinite moment with a somewhat perplexed look on his face before nodding. "I see, I see. Just avoid being all lovey-dovey during working hours.”

Sometimes Shidō’s utter idiocy was a blessing.

As soon as the obnoxious man stormed off, they let out a sigh of relief, instantly distancing from one another almost as if a repulsive force was interwoven between them. Without saying anything and with a face still red like a mature tomato, Kurisu turned to return to her duties, leaving Okabe staring at her back for second. 

"You’re very welcome, Christina", he said bitterly, crossing his arms.

He wasn’t expecting an apology for dragging him in that situation, because he knew better than expecting something similar from a girl like Kurisu, but he couldn’t help but be pissed. Was a simple “thanks” such a big deal? 

He saw her stop dead in her tracks just to rush towards him with the fury of an enraged beast. He felt a tug at his uniform’s sleeve and, a few moments later, he found himself in the pantry with a little slip of a thing that barely reached his chin and that was cautiously looking at him. Just when he felt mentally ready to receive a slap in his face, something happened that he would never have expected.

"Th-thank you."

In that moment Okabe was quite certain that had it not been firmly tied to the skull, his jaw would have reached the floor. “Well, oh… Uhm... “, he coughed awkwardly, suddenly feeling like looking away from the petite woman in front of him. “I-I mean, it was… Nothing?”.

A faint blush tinged Kurisu’s cheeks as she shot him an adorable pouting glance.

"D-don’t get any weird ideas! It's not that I'm really grateful to you, but I really do like this job and that idiot Shido didn’t want to leave me alone and I've dragged you in all this without asking... "

Okabe watched her with a perplexed look for a moment, before letting an amused smile go. Now it was very clear. Kurisu Makise was a tsundere, and one of the worst species, moreover.

"I can see it," he calmly interrupted. "That you love this job, I mean."

"Well, becoming a Tennoji-san student has always been my dream ever since I was a little girl," she said, looking at her feet. "I’ve always liked to cook, because my dad managed a small restaurant and I loved watching him cook and asking him to teach me how to prepare the dishes I liked most."

"I can’t feel even a sliver of envy for those who tasted your first dishes," he giggled teasingly.

"Hey! I've improved rather quickly!”, the girl reprimanded, playfully hitting him with her elbow.

"Ouch! Man, you're really terrible...", he teased her before stepping towards the door. For a moment, he seemed to have been momentarily lost in thought before continuing. "Anyway, the shift is over. Outside it's dark, I'll take you to the station. "

Kurisu looked surprised for a moment before giving a nod of assent. "Oh... Thank you."

"Are you sure you're okay? You've already thanked me twice in ten minutes. "

"Just shut up, you idiot."

§

"Are you stupid or what? I told you to be careful and keep an eye on them when I went to help Hashida-san with desserts! "

"Listen, The Zombie, you are not my boss, and I have other matters to attend other than listening to your orders”.

"Matters such as - just to make an example - burning the best wonton I've ever been able to produce?"

"Whatever it is, just take off the burned part and--"

"Faris-san, stop me, or this time I’ll seriously hit him!”

If she had to be honest, she expected that sooner or later such a thing would happen. Over the past month and a half she and Okabe got on too well for their usual standards, spending their breaks giggling about the absurd faces Shidō made when he saw them together. Actually they didn’t do anything amazing. They usually held hands for a few moments, sometimes trying to pull off a smile, occasionally Okabe embraced her when the molester approached her and Kurisu had even tried to kiss his cheek to thank him when he had brought a bunch of flowers to congratulate her for her promotion with the result of fainting following a copious epistaxis.

Each of those gestures cost them an immense effort. Kurisu had lived all her adolescence in function of her own dream, and Okabe, with his bizarre antics of, and his complete inability to read the atmosphere, never had a girlfriend: even simple gestures such as hugging or touching hands gave both of them a strange tension that they would not define as unpleasant but which prevented them from being completely comfortable with each other.

The members of the kitchen who were witnessing the same quarrel between the two were laughing and turning their eyes to the sky, they didn’t ask any questions about what was happening to them, seeing the event as one of the many lovers’ quarrels they had and continued doing their job, until a voice from everyone knew and hated broke into the room.

"What’s happening here? What are these screams? And you two”, Shidō inquired pointing towards Okabe and Kurisu. "Something smells here, and I’m not talking about the food… I’ve never seen two people who supposedly are in love come at each other's neck this way. Is there something that I should know? "

Silence fell in the room. Kurisu Makise's neurons began to work at full speed.

_Not now. Not now. Not when I'm so close to making my dream come true._

Really. It wasn’t her fault that time as well. It was her body that moved on its own, driven by that irrepressible desire of not wanting to give up a goal one step away from its realization. She would have thought about the consequences later.  
She grabbed Okabe by the collar of his uniform, forcing him to bend to overcome their height difference, and, firmly closing her eyes, impetuously placed her lips on his. An electric shock seemed to run from head to toe in those short moments when their lips were in contact. Most of their coworkers managed to hide their embarrassment behind some awkward coughing, and some courageous enough even whistled. Hashida-san, with an outraged voice, had shouted something along the lines of "Death to 3D couples!".

"Just some lovers’ quarrels", she cut short after dropping her deadly grip on Okabe and turning to Shidō. "Nothing that a kiss and a good chat can’t solve."

Shidō cocked an eyebrow, looking somewhat perplexed for a moment.

"Well, you’d better calm yourselves down during the break. We can’t afford to mess up dinner service for your quarrels", he reproached them before disappearing beyond the entrance.

When Kurisu found the courage to look at Okabe, he was staring at her with a visibly shocked expression, his cheeks tinged of a pale red. Their colleagues watched them with visibly amused expressions.

"You", she said, turning to Okabe without looking at him. "Let’s meet up at the usual place, we have to discuss a couple of things during this break."

The boy watched her quickly walk away, still shaken, toward the warehouse before giving an embarrassed look at the crowd that populated the kitchen. "Hey you", he mumbled after clearing his voice. "What are you looking at? M-mind your own business."

§

When Okabe reached her in the warehouse, Kurisu could not look away from the “very attractive” monochromatic floor tiles. She was terribly embarrassed about her earlier gesture, but she didn’t regret it and wasn’t entirely sure that this was due to the fact that she had once again saved her precious dream. The thought of being responsible of such an illogic and impulsive action made every fiber of being scream in frustration, because Okabe Rintarō was the only person who had the capacity of making her lose her composure. What frustrated Kurisu the most, though, was that she hadn’t felt even an ounce of disgust in doing what she did.  
She sensed Okabe's look on herself, but all her courage had run out the moment she had kissed him in front of the whole kitchen, for she could not really look at his face. Crap, she had given her first kiss to an idiot.

"Kurisu."

It was the first time he called her with her real name and, almost instinctively, their gazes met.

Kurisu found herself closing her eyes, her cheeks stinging and a slight tingling under her skin, and Okabe's lips gently laid on hers, distancing before she could form a coherent thought. It hadn’t been much better than the one in the kitchen, where, in the heat of the gesture, she had bumped against the teeth of the other. If she had to describe that second kiss, she would associate it with the image of small birds pecking one another. Short, timid and, above all, embarrassed.

"Just... Just a kiss", she replied to the silent question she read in Okabe’s gaze.

And then, without even understanding how that happened, she found herself with her back against the wall and an arm of Okabe around her waist, intent on languidly moving her lips together with the boy's. During a non-specific moment - perhaps when he realized that he could kiss her without fear of breaking her - he had even laid his hand on her cheek, caressing her with his thumb.

"How many... How many times until now?", Okabe asked, taking a moment away from her lips to catch his breath.

"How can I know... 26, maybe?"

"Did you count them?!"

"S-shut up!"

§

It was not exactly clear to her how she and Okabe had ended up spending their break of that day kissing in the warehouse; she only knew that from that day, for both of them, it had become much less difficult to behave like a couple. Of course, they continued to bicker like an old married couple on alternate days, and she could get Okabe calling her by her true name only when they found themselves repeating what happened in the warehouse.

And then, a couple of months later, a new girl came in the kitchen - what was her name? Ah, yes, Ruka Urushibara - and Shidō promptly shifted his unwanted attentions on her, so the two felt obliged to celebrate the event, though they couldn’t exactly say they were happy about Ruka being the new target of their boss. Stealing a bottle of saké from the fridge, they took refuge behind the back door of the cafe, allowing themselves a toast.

"I have the impression that Shidō won’t be very happy when he’ll find out that Rukako is a boy”, Okabe commented visibly amused before gulping down a sip of liquor.

"But you have to say that he's extremely talented, he could steal my place if I don’t pay attention”.

"You're really terrible, always thinking about work", he teased filling her glass one more time.

"Your words don’t match with the truth. And even if they did, I’m sure you’d love me the same”.

To be honest, it was simply a joke. She was not even sure that there was something between her and Okabe, but she wanted to say to take the time that they had to pretend to be a couple lightly.

Okabe's serious response came as a surprise as he gave her an intense look that made a shiver run down her spine.

"It's true. And yes, I’ve fallen head over heels for you, so… Take on your responsibilities".

Kurisu blushed fiercely. 

"T-tsk… I always take on my responsibilities."


	2. What is your name?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okabe Rintarō and Makise Kurisu's lives take a weird turn when they start swapping bodies with a complete stranger. What could it mean?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took an awfully long time to proofread, but it's totally worth it. If this story turned out to be way better than it was when I first translated it from my native language it's because [Cross-Flame](https://m.fanfiction.net/u/4586114/Crecelia) did an AMAZING proofreading job and really helped me improving the pacing of the events.  
> Today's also Tanabata, so yeah, what day could be better to post a story about fate-bound lovers than this? This is, as you can imagine, a "Your Name." AU. I hardly believe there's someone that doesn't know about this movie by the genius of Makoto Shinkai, but if you don't I highly recommend you to watch it, because it's _beautiful_ and it'd be totally worth it. 
> 
> So yeah, here's this 10.000 words long wall of text. Read it while listening to the movie soundtrack if you want, since I think it really suits both the original movie and this fic.

_“Once in a while when I wake up, I find myself crying._  
_The dream I must’ve had I can never recall._  
_But… the sensation that I’ve lost something, lingers for a long time after I wake up.”_

 

When Okabe Rintarō wakes up, in that brilliant morning of early spring, he immediately understands that something is wrong. To welcome him as soon as he opens his eyes there is not the familiar ceiling of the Laboratory, but the monotonous one of what was supposed to be his bedroom. Lilac painted walls and pastel colored sheets and curtains. A small desk rests against a wall with various paper sheets scattered on the wooden surface. Plushies of somewhat cute anime mascots lay on the bed he was sleeping on until some moments before.

When he jolts up a cascade of long, silky chestnut hair falls before his eyes, scattering over his now slim shoulders when his suddenly small, thin hands try to get it out of his sight.

Panicked, his hands instinctively grab something that should be under that the fabric. He’s quite disappointed when he finds something dangerously close to nothing.  
With an amazing effort, he gets up in search of a mirror, finding one over the bathroom sink (since when he has a toilet in his room?). He’s wearing a ridiculous pink t-shirt and black shorts that definitely belong to a pajamas, and the person looking back at him is a woman with blue eyes and a slim body who doesn’t appear to be much younger than him.

“...Eh?”

A scream belonging to a feminine voice which definitely isn’t appropriate for a mad scientist of his caliber echoes through the house. Disappointment fills his whole being as he observes with incredulous eyes his “new” body.

… 

“Oh, c’mon, why am I still scrawny?!”

* * *

“Tutturu!~”

The strange remark is what wakes Kurisu Makise up, and she awakens to her back aching terribly. 

Kurisu forces herself to get up from what seems to be a sofa too small for her long, bony legs. Has she always been this tall? And since when did she buy khaki pants?

In front of her stands a black-haired young girl with bushy eyebrows and a wide smile, and the situation suddenly becomes very clear and at the same time terribly confusing: something is not like it should be.

She realizes she’s in a little room immersed in semi-darkness and an unhealthy amount of dust. A boy far too... Round, for normal standards is sitting in front of a PC, giggling. Something about his laughter is unsettling. 

When she drags a hand on her own face, she can’t help but feel the sharpness of its cheekbones and the stubbles on her chin. “Um… can you tell me where the toilet is?” 

The girl, after giving Kurisu a questioning tilt of the head, responds first. “It’s over there, Okarin.” She points her finger out back. “You go there all the time--”

Kurisu ignores the rest of the girl’s comment and rushes into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. When she turns around, she’s facing a mirror reflecting the image of a young man in his late teens with black hair untidily pulled back and wearing a white dusty lab coat on a simple t-shirt.

The moment when she realizes that there is actually something between her legs, she let out a shriek that threatened to crack all the windows of the apartment.

* * *

Three times that week, they found themselves having strange dreams that resembled the life of someone else. When they woke up their memories were hazy, something indistinct and blurred, but the reactions of the people around them left no room for other possibilities about what happened.

Maho Hiyajō, her colleague and Kurisu’s considered “senpai” at Victor Chondria University, looks at her suspiciously, almost as if trying to examine her. Her expression turns into one of relief as she doesn't find anything abnormal about her.

"Ah, seems like you’re finally normal today.”

"Normal? I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” she says, dumbfounded.

"Have you forgotten? First you forget your name, then how to speak English and lastly, you forgot the credentials to access Amadeus. People in the lab are starting to wonder what happened to you."

Kurisu Makise, a 17-year-old well-established neuroscientist in a prestigious American institute, remembers something and suddenly knows who to blame, though it goes against any possible scientific theory that she’s going through in her brain.

The day before she had a weird dream where she woke up on a dusty couch as a plain-looking young man, surrounded by people she didn’t know. Right after that, her seniors and colleagues in the laboratory pointed out some suspicious changes in her behaviour which she wasn't privy to. 

She briefly considered short-term memory loss, but the reactions of her acquaintances suggested that that wasn’t the case. So, after a careful analysis of the events, she concluded that what they had witnessed was a completely different personality from her own.

She dropped into the chair in front of her desk with a sigh, deciding to think about how to go about solving their predicament later and instead focus her attention on revising the thesis she should have delivered that week. Scrolling through the pages, something catches her eye. She brings the edge of a page closer to her face, and Kurisu recognizes messily-written Japanese characters that read: 

**Who are you?**

Kurisu observes the sentence for a few moments and suddenly she is certain that in the past few days some strange and extraordinary phenomenon is at play.  
That morning the tall figure Professor Alexis Leskinen greets her with a huge smile, and Kurisu immediately notices the small translating device he usually wore during his foreign trips.

"Ah, Kurisu! Ohayō gozaimasu, kyō wa genkide--”.

"--Thank you, Professor, but today I finally got back in top shape, so you don’t have to turn that on, sir. I apologize for my performance for the past few days," she answers in fluent English. 

Professor Leskinen talking to her in her native language further proves her hypothesis: she and that mysterious boy are exchanging bodies. For a more definitive confirmation, she takes a pen and scribbles something in hiragana on her right hand:

**Who are YOU?**

* * *

"Okarin, man, I think the time has finally come when you've completely lost your mind."

Okabe Rintarō, an eighteen-year-old Electronic Engineering student at Tokyo Denki University, looks at his right-hand man, Itaru Hashida - simply called "Daru" - with a perplexed look.

"Shut up, SupaH HackaH. I'm the insane mad scientist Hōōin Kyōma! It’s only natural my genius is misunderstood by the rest of the world”, he exclaims in his usual theatrical way, crossing his arms in an equally exaggerated pose. 

"Oooh, Okarin is back, Mayushii is so happy!"

Mayuri Shiina, his sixteen-year-old childhood friend clad in a blue dress and bushy eyebrows, rushes to crush him in a hug with more exuberance than usual. When he feels something soft pressing against his abdomen, instead of feeling the usual embarrassment, he recalls the redhead from his dreams and how much better it would have been if she’d had Mayuri’s curves over her thin profile. Okabe quickly dismisses the idea in favor of responding to his younger friend.

"I've told you that my name is Hōō-".

"--Mayushii was afraid that something strange had happened to Okarin or that he was angry with her," the girl explains, ignoring his usual protests. Mayuri then points out her concern about his odd behavior, describing with a somewhat worried look how he said he didn't know anyone called “Hōōin Kyōma" and that she was “no hostage.”

Okabe's gaze darts back and forth between his two friends, confused. What does Mayuri mean by all that? 

After a few moments of deep thought, he decides to dismiss his confusion as consequence of having just woken up, chugging half a bottle of Dr.Pepper to refresh his mind.

"Much better. I already feel my synapses come back to work due to the elixir of intellectuals."

His current predicament becomes even more bizarre with every second that passes and Okabe starts wondering how things could have possibly been like that. He is an insane mad scientist but what happened goes way beyond his usual folly, unless there is something he isn’t taking into account.

He quickly recaps the events of the last week and suddenly remembers: a couple of days before he had a weird dream in which he was living the life of a young woman... “Kurisu” was it?

_“...Is there a connection between them?”_ He muses.

Daru suddenly inquires, interrupting his thoughts.

"Okarin, what the hell is that thing on your arm?"

The hacker flashes him a worried glance before dedicating himself to his eroge once again.

Carefully lifting the left sleeve of his lab coat, Okabe finds something written in black that he was sure hadn’t been there the previous night.

**Who are YOU?**

And suddenly he realized that it hadn’t been a dream. He and that mysterious girl are actually switching bodies.

Even though they had finally gotten over the problem of communication, that didn’t mean that living in body different from their own was easy. 

Kurisu’s work schedule is awfully packed and by the end of each day he lives in the young scientist’s body he feels like his brain is about to burst even if “his” body seems to be used to the lack of sleep and constant caffeine feeding. One particular day, while trying to understand the basics of how a human brain worked, Okabe falls asleep in the unfamiliar laboratory of Victor Chondria University, unceremoniously drooling all over her notes.

**Why does everything in your life revolve around science, zombie?  
I’m not surprised you don’t have a boyfriend. (￣▼￣)**

_Because that’s my job, duh.  
I don’t have one simply because I don’t want to. (¬▂¬)_

Just how thick-faced is he to tease her for her lack of a boyfriend? It’s not like he’s in a better situation than hers; she’s pretty sure that his social skills are abysmal, given the... “colorful” cast that are his friends. At least she had gotten her fair share of suitors, but she’s simply too focused on her research for paying them attention.

**Yeah, nice excuse, Christina. Very credible.**

_You idiot! It’s not like you have a girlfriend, either.  
And who’s “Christina”? _

**It’s you, of course.  
Nullpo.**

_I don’t ever recall giving you permission of calling me names. (`A´)  
GAH._

**Hōōin Kyōma needs no permission, Kurigohanandkamehameha.**

Through the familiar name he drops, Kurisu finds out that Okabe has discovered her @channel account and taken part in several discussions shitposting with her name during work hours she gets so angry that immediately calls the number he had given to her, determined to make him pay for his misdeeds.  
Her anger only increases the moment a polite voice answers that the number she has called doesn’t exist, signaling that that idiot of a mad scientist has given her a false number.

_What did you do with my @channel account?_

**4.37 AM? Do you ever feed yourself with something that is not caffein, genius girl?  
I’ve only done what YOU, my dear @chan lovely, would have done. (￣▼￣*)**

_Stop messing with me, you’ve even given me a fake number!_  
_You don’t have the right to preach when you go for cheap salt ramen._  
_Not that I'm worried about your health, obviously._ (￣⊿￣) 

**Tsundere orz. （￣ー￣；  
Instead of stocking up on those lower-tier drinks of yours, you should drink what your mom cooks up, give her some company. It seems like she’s a bit lonely.**

_I'm not a tsundere! ヽ(*ﾟдﾟ)ノ_  
_Stop sticking your nose in my personal business. (ʘдʘ╬)_  
_Anyway... I'll try to be more present._

 

Okabe was a pathetic idiot most of the time, but Kurisu begun to understand how he could be (at least) a decent person. She saw it in Mayuri’s wistful yet happy gaze she had when reminiscing of a childhood that this body, and not the 17-year-old borrowing it, experienced. 

Okabe also seemed to share his time between his friends - who, for some reason unknown to her, seemed to think very highly of him - and lessons at his university. His grades were not as terrible as she thought (and she first thought of him as an idiot) and his appearance]was decent (although he really needed to quit donning the “mad scientist” gettup of his). At some point, and for no reason at all, Kurisu wondered why, despite being surrounded by beautiful girls who hold him in high regard, Okabe has never been asked out by any of them. 

That's why she decides to roll up her - no his - sleeves and take over the situation.  
Kurisu Makise, apparently, was a prodigious seventeen years-old scientist esteemed by the academic world. Yet he was becoming aware of how under that title there was so much more. Kurisu's agenda was 90% made of work commitments, deadlines and conferences to hold, with the 10% left for lunch and dinner with her mother (she listened to his advice, apparently!).

Her e-mails recounted names of illustrious scientists of her lab, with Maho Hiyajō and Alexis Leskinen being the names that popped up the most. In her life nothing seemed to correspond to what a woman her age normally did. Having little to no friends, Kurisu apparently didn’t have a boyfriend or even a chance to know someone interesting; yet, now that he gives a better look at the woman looking back at him in the mirror, he notices how her eyes are of a rare blue and surrounded by long lashes. Her hair was silky and a pretty color of chestnut. Ignoring her flat chest, the girl’s looks had it going for her: if Kurisu wanted to date, there’d be a lot of potential love interests she’d easily charm.

So he decides to take over the situation.

* * *

_What the hell have you been doing?!  
Amadeus told me that you did nothing but calling her "Christina". Everyone in the lab is now mocking me with that nickname of yours! (TдT)_

**You and that artificial intelligence are two demonic beings, just so you know. ┬─┬ノ(ಠ_ಠノ)  
** **Also Christina is your name, so I don't see why I shouldn’t use it.**  
**Professor Leskinen liked it so much that he regrets not calling you this before. He and Hiyajo are really fond of you.**

_Insult me again and I’ll turn your neocortex into a flower pot. (ʘдʘ╬)_  
_I’ll say this once again: there’s no "tina", have I been clear?_  
_And I told you not to butt in my private life._  
_...You should focus on conquering Mayuri’s heart, instead. ღゝ◡╹)ノ♡_

**Shut up, American Virgin.  
Mayuri is just a childhood friend. ＝(￣□￣;)⇒**

 

When Okabe Rintarō wakes up, on that hot morning of July 28th, he feels the strange urge of checking his cell phone. A note from Kurisu last edited the evening before lies unread on the screen of his smartphone:

_Good morning, Okabe!_  
_If you’re reading this note it means that today is a great day for you and that, for once, I find myself compelled to envy you._  
_Mayuri Shiina waits for you at 10.30 in front of Akihabara Station for a romantic date, since “you" asked her out. Given the enthusiasm she has accepted with and knowing your absolute inability to relate to the feminine gender - not to mention your terrible taste in terms of clothing - I have prepared for you the perfect outfit for the occasion. You can find it folded on the chair in front of the desk._ <  
_I made reservations in that adorable cafè in front of the Ikebukuro station, be galant and offer everything she orders and, above all, try to make a conversation (although I'm sure this will not be difficult given how long you two have known each other)._

_Since I know you'll be in a pinch without my help, I'll leave some useful tips for perverted virgins with no experience like you! (◠‿◠✿)_

Okabe jolts instantly the moment he realizes that he only has half an hour to make himself presentable.

As he prepares at an alarming speed (risking to end up rolling on the floor more than once while forcing himself into the tight jeans Kurisu had chosen for him) he curses the woman for being so hands-on like his sentimental life is one of her experiments. Mayuri is very pretty, kind and has a great heart, and since childhood, Okabe had always deeply cared for her, but he isn’t certain that the kind of affection he feels is a romantic one that the redhead assumes they’d have.

§

When Mayuri sees her childhood friend rushing to her, she greets him with her signature greeting ("Okaaarin! Tutturuuuuu!~") and a bright smile. She doesn’t mind at all that Okabe’s late, despite all his sheepish apologies.

The train to Ikebukuro is filled to the brim with passengers, to the point that someone pushes Mayuri’s small figure just to get in. His “date” ends up being squished against his chest, the awkward position causing him to blush. After a while Okabe remains uncomfortable, albeit not for their closeness. There’s something that doesn’t sit well with him about all this; if he’s honest, it’s as if he was going out with a sister than a potential lover.

En route to the café he and Mayuri spoke as they normally would: what Okabe comes up with to keep their conversation alive was the usual Organization nonsense and “the plots woven by its four leaders,” whose names were punctually (and innocently) distorted by the younger girl, much to his disgust.

His efforts are all for naught soon after though, as while eating he realizes that much of the conversation is led by Mayuri. Okabe inevitably falls prey to panic, and he excuses himself to the washroom to find something that wouldn’t make the date entirely flunk in the links that Kurisu has left him.

 

§

Okabe feels the embarrassment and frustration grow exponentially as he scrolls through them, with everything she sent having odiously similar titles, almost carefully chosen to tease him: “Dates for dummies", "How to win a girl even though you are a total incompetent”, "Relationships and chūnibyō: why they cannot coexist?”, “Why did my girlfriend dump me? I said I had sealed powers in my right arm!”.

Okabe feels a surge of frustration as he realizes that this is probably Kurisu’s way of getting revenge for the @channel prank.

“That demonic being.”

§

Later in the afternoon, when the sun is falling behind the tall skyscrapers of Tokyo, he is dragged by Mayuri to the Radio Kaikan building, where an exhibition about brain science had been set up. _"I'm sure Okarin will like this place!”_ The raven-haired girl remarks as she points towards the posted fliers. Okabe’s chuunibyou tangents stop as he occupies himself with them. He even takes his time reading a rather curious paper about how human memories could be “digitized” until a nudge to his shoulder interrupts him.

"Uhm, Okarin... Is it fine if Mayushii asks you something?"

Okabe gave her a questioning look, swallowing while anxiety begins to spread thinly under his skin and into his nervous system: _“Don’t tell me she’s going to confess. That would be… Complicated. Mad scientists don’t know how feelings work!”_

He doesn’t even realize he’s nodding vigorously until Mayuri speaks up again.

"Until a few weeks ago Okarin liked Mayushii, didn’t he?"

Okabe almost chokes in hearing that question, and words die in his throat, forcing him to gasp without actually emitting any sound.

"You know, Mayushii had noticed it and was happy, because she likes Okarin so much! It doesn’t matter if he is Hōōin Kyōma or Okarin, the kind person who asked me out", Mayuri continues with a melancholic smile. Okabe, with his thoughts still racing, waits intently for the "but” he knows is about to come. 

"Yet Mayushii has the feeling that now things are no longer that way. Today’s date has just confirmed it. Okarin just can’t see her the same way Mayushii sees him…” 

She stretches her lips into a sad smile and the voice of a child who is holding back tears before she concludes:

“...Because Okarin’s in love with someone else, isn’t he?"

Okabe felt the tip of his ears burning.. "N-no, Mayuri... W-what are you -"

"Mmmh-mh", she interrupted him, shaking her head bravely. "There's no need to tell a gentle lie just so that Mayushii can feel better.” She looks up, voice quivering ever so slightly. “Mayushii only wishes for Okarin’s happiness."

Okabe lowers his gaze, unable to say anything. At the moment, he doesn’t know what to feel, but Mayuri, as she’s proven in the past, is always right, and so she must be now; what else could he say that wouldn’t end up with him lying to her face?

"It's better for Mayushii to go," she says, gently shaking her head. Before disappearing behind the elevator doors, she adds: “Don’t worry too much for your hostage.”

Okabe is at loss for words. A pang of guilt stings his heart as he recalls the picture of Mayuri’s sad smile and her kind words and he can’t help but feel like he has betrayed her in some way.  
But why does he feel that way? It’s not like he has really done something wrong, but somehow a voice inside his head says that the words his childhood friend spoke were the truth.

He is… in love with someone else?

Suddenly, Kurisu’s smiling face pops up into his mind. He stiffles a gasp placing a shaky hand on his mouth just to find that his face is burning up. 

Oh.

In the end he leaves with a sigh, focusing on wandering between 3D models of the human brain and computer representations of the transmission of nervous impulses, until another sign caught his attention.

"Memory and Artificial Intelligence: The New Frontier of Neuroscience", it reads, but he doesn’t have time to immerse himself in reading because an oddly familiar voice draws his attention.

"Interesting, isn’t it? If you want to know more soon Professor Leskinen will hold a lecture on the topic."

Had he never seen her in the guise of Kurisu’s body, the petite woman would have mistaken her for an elementary student. 

"Ah, my name is Hiyajō Maho, I'm Professor's assistant."

"Hi... Hiyajō?", he asks with trembling voice.

If Maho is in Japan together with Professor Leskinen, then she must be there too. Why didn’t she warn him about something so important?

"Um, Okabe Rintarō”, he says a little more nervously than he’d like. For some reason, It takes a lot of courage for him to ask:

“Are you, by accident, a colleague of Makise Kurisu? I know you've worked together on this project. "

Maho looks at him with her mouth slightly agape for a few moments before a shadow of pain blankets her eyes. Her expression is one of immense sadness as her lips stretch into a thin, pale line at the mention of Kurisu’s name.

"She... You don't know?"

An unpleasant feeling suddenly tightens around the pit of his stomach. 

"Know what?"

Maho’s expression, if possible, becomes even more dreary and sad. "On July 28, last year, a direct flight from America to Japan crashed into the ocean due to engine failure. There have been no survivors and... ", she pauses; fights to even finish the sentence.

"...Kurisu was on that plane. "

* * *

The rest of the week goes by in a dull succession of light and darkness. Kurisu Makise, the person who gave new energy to his life with her nosy but good-hearted presence, had died, disappearing forever from this world as the ephemeral memory of a dream.

He stays alone at the Lab, abandoning himself to the pain in the darkness of the small room. He has asked all of his friends to leave him be for a while, refusing even Mayuri's kind words of comfort, even if she has all the right reasons to hold a grudge against him. 

His phone vibrates, the light of the screen hurting his eyes. Okabe inwardly dramatizes that the brightness even causes tears to form, but it comes from the message he is just sent.

**_Sender: Mayuri  
Subject: I'm worried. (。。*)_ **

**_Tutturu! It’s Mayushii. (´･ω･｀)_**  
**_Hey, Okarin. How are you? Daru-kun told Mayushii that you’re weirder than usual since they told you about Makise-san._**  
**_Mayushii hopes this isn’t her words’ fault, because she wouldn't forgive herself for that._**  
**_You know, Mayushii has always seen Okarin as her Hikoboshi but she also knew that she has never been his Orihime._**  
**_The fact that Okarin's Orihime-sama can no longer shine is painful for Mayushii too._**  
**_Mayushii doesn’t want to be a nuisance, but she feels obligated to tell you that Hōōin Kyōma would not give up so easily._**  
**_I love you._**

****__

Okabe feels a pang of guilt stinging his heart. The way he’s acting hurts Mayuri’s feelings and yet… she’s the one convinced that everything is her own fault. How can she even think of being a burden?

A knock comes from the lab door.

"Uh, excuse me, is Okabe-san around?"

He’s still overwhelmed by the contents of Mayuri’s message that, without any thought, he opens the door. "Can I…”

Maho Hiyajō quickly observes his face, her expression instantly shifting into one of worry.

“...come in?"

"Ah... uh, yes, of course. Sorry for the mess", he replies distractedly. Maho enters the room without much ceremony, leaving the mismatched slippers she is wearing by the door.

"Er, my apologies for that. My luggage got lost and I had to make do with the first things I found”, cuts short the scientist sitting on the couch. She wastes no time to address the elephant in the room:

"I'll go straight to the point. You... You knew Kurisu, didn’t you?"

He wonders what he should say in such a situation. Hiyajō is a scientist and he's positive she wouldn’t believe an explanation as far fetched as saying they swapped bodies. That’s why he opts for a vague answer, hoping that she won’t pry any further. 

"Yeah, but the circumstances were quite peculiar", he explains, avoiding her gaze. "You wouldn’t believe me, no matter how I explain it."

"A scientist must check all possibilities", Maho insisted. Her words suddenly remind him of the way Kurisu used to behave, and at that, his chest tightens.

"It's almost ironic, you know,” Maho says, her voice trembling ever so slightly. “I thought I knew Kurisu well enough, but now I realize there has been a side of her unknown to me. I mean, I… I didn’t even know you two were friends..."

And suddenly he watches the petite woman in front of him sobbing softly. Kurisu had always had a good relationship with Maho, or at least he could tell with how she behaved around “her.” Making their relationship even closer had come naturally, because in the words of Maho Hiyajō, at that time as in the past, he had always felt a deep respect for Kurisu. A strange warmness pools into his chest and he finds himself repressing the improper impulse to embrace the woman in front of him and tell her everything, to save her from a grief she didn’t deserve to feel.

And so he does.

§

And so he tells her the absurd story of how Okabe Rintarō and Makise Kurisu met and, despite the initial hesitation, Maho Hiyajō believes every single word of it. There’s a silence between them that lasts so long until Okabe breaks the ice.

"Hiyajō-san."

"Mh?"

Okabe looks at Maho with a firm resolve, and, touched by his own story, comes to the realization:

"I... I'm in love with Kurisu."

The sudden realization hits him like a train, and everything finally makes sense. It’s always been like this. He was blinded by Kurisu’s radiant self-confidence and sharp acumen from the first, cautious messages they exchanged, to the point that he felt like someone like him didn’t have the right to speak casually with such an extraordinary person. That was why he’s never been able to call her name properly, he was simply too embarrassed.  
A bit nosy, proud and always so stubborn. After their first exchanges he truly thought he had never met a more unlikable woman. But under that cold and unfriendly facade, she was so kind, and frail and sweet. She worked so hard to improve his relationship with his friends and, despite the fact that his date with Mayuri has been a failure, she really helped him sorting out his feelings for her. Kurisu wasn’t just the person who he exchanged bodies with, she was… the most important woman to him. The one he could never forget, even if he tried to. 

He wanted to be with her so much...

"Good.” The scientist flashes him an amused smile. 

Maho pauses for a moment, her smile turning into a slight frown as her fingers fiddle absentmindedly with her unruly dark hair.

“Listen… do you love her enough to help me?”

Okabe doesn’t even hesitate.

"I will.”

Something in him agitated, twisted and pulsated, and Okabe decided to bet it all: if only a tiny part of Kurisu had remained in him, he was willing to even go to America to bring her back.

§

The eleven and a half hours spent on a flight to America were exhausting. After just an hour Hiyajō collapsed, drooling in a very unladylike manner on his left shoulder. On the other side, Professor Leskinen - who had immediately become excited about him joining them as soon as Maho named Kurisu - proposed to watch a movie on the TV set built unto the seats in front of them, hastening to include Japanese subtitles.

The movie chosen is an American love comedy called “It’s a Boy Girl Thing" which he’s never heard of, but soon he finds himself regretting having accepted the man’s offer. Okabe didn’t know what was worse: the fact that the relationship between the protagonists awfully resembled the way he and Kurisu interacted, or the suggestive wink Leskinen flashed him during the movie, almost as if he had a hunch about the kind of feeling that tied him to the young woman.

After it ended, Okabe gave in to a restless sleep, dotted with images of the life he and Kurisu shared for a few months (and definitely compensated for the awkward “Holy Cow!”s the professor spouted).

§

After leaving the luggage in the small hotel where he and Maho would stay, the scientist calls a taxi and mumbles some words in (remarkably) fluent english to the driver. A town passes in front of his eyes as the yellow car swerves among the streets, and Okabe soon gets the idea that Kurisu lived in a quiet and pleasant neighborhood, what with the brightly colored houses and the well-maintained gardens surrounding them.

The car leaves them in front of a series of such houses, and Maho leads him wordlessly to a house with white walls and a tree of those that seemed to be lemons planted in the lawn.The surname on the belldoor, written in Western characters, sends a thrill down his spine.

His stomach starts to rebel and his mind seems to refuse to provide any kind of help other than compare the situation to a boy who’s meeting his date’s parents for the first time.

The person who answers the door is a woman who looks almost like what Kurisu would look like, were she to grow older; short stature, thin frame, shoulder length chestnut hair and brown eyes. She welcomes him and Maho with a sad smile; although Okabe quickly sees it brighten when Maho officially presents him as a “friend who had met Kurisu during a cultural exchange between Tokyo Denki and Viktor Chondria.”

"My daughter was so busy with her job that she never had time to make new friends. I'm glad she had both you and Maho-san, albeit for a little while. Though I’m quite surprised, since she has never made mention of you, Okabe-kun."

Mrs Makise's statement makes him flustered, warmth spreading on his cheeks as he looks away. Okabe wishes his mind didn’t interpret it as him being one of the persons special to Kurisu. “Don’t assume hypotheses to be facts,”, he could almost imagine her saying.

"I haven’t really fixed her things; they’re all as they originally were.” There’s a pause as Kurisu’s mother stares at her daughter’s room with who knows how much feelings. “I'll leave you to it."

Kurisu's room seems like it’s never changed since “he” lived in it. The pastel pink walls and white tents that filtered the afternoon light surrounds all her things, one item being a quirky-faced white plush that lay on the bed.

"She always had a weakness for that... Thing. Even though, now that I give it better look, I find it somewhat cute”, Maho comments with a nostalgic smile.

"Kurisu had an unexpectedly cute side, didn’t she?" Okabe asks, looking at the desk distractedly.

"You can bet,” Maho confirms, scanning around the room. "If what you told me is true, you’ve seen how Amadeus Kurisu reacts to teasing, right?"

He did.

It’s late in the night and the neurophysiology laboratory of Victor Chondria University is silent and empty, with the exception of a single room. Okabe Rintarō, finally alone with Kurisu’s virtual counterpart, is enjoying a nice “chat" with her. Though it’s a terribly embarrassing thing to say out loud, the more he quarrels with 「Kurisu」 the more he looks forward to his first meeting with the real thing. The thought itself makes weird things to his heart.

_“You’re blushing. What are you thinking about?”_

_“Shut up, Christina!”_

_“There is no ‘tina!’”_

_“It’s your name, you don’t recognize it, maybe?”_

_”My name is Ku-ri-su!”_

_“I think I might have misheard, American Virgin.”_

_”Ah! You, son of a…”_

“...Charming,” he recalls, voice cracking just a bit. Breathing suddenly becomes a bit more difficult too. Those funny exchanges between him and Kurisu were merely memories, full of nostalgia for something that could have been, but never will be.  
A gust of wind raises the curtains beyond the half-closed window, and the sunlight drifts over into the room, painting it of a delicate orange color. A faint sparkling attracts his gaze: lying at the center of Kurisu’s desk there’s a finely decorated silver spoon.

_“In Europe they say that it helps gather happiness. I-it's a good omen!”_

"What is it?”, he asks Maho pointing at the object.

The older scientist observes the spoon for a few moments, frowning. "It’s just a spoon," she says, finding Okabe’s interest in foreign silverware a little surprising.

"Oh, that."

Mrs. Makise's voice coming from behind their backs startles them. The woman wears the same melancholic smile that he saw during his and Maho’s first meeting with her and the sight makes his chest tighten. "That spoon is the gift Shōichi gave to Kurisu on her 10th birthday.” Her smile turns to a frown as she looks away. “You can keep it if you want. I'm sure Kurisu would have approved."

He doesn’t exactly know what to say. What kind of relationship did Mrs. Makise think he had with Kurisu to give him what was such an important memoir of her? 

§

When they’re on their taxi back to hotel, he has the spoon tightly held between his fingers.

"Well... I guess I might have lied a little to make things run smoother", the scientist admits with no hesitation without looking away from her smartphone. “I just said that you were Kurisu’s boyfriend, no big deal”.

Okabe feels his face flare up. "Th-that’s not what I’d call ‘lying a little!’”

Maho looks up just to give him a joking smirk. "C’mon, don’t make such a fuss. We both know that it would have ended like that if you and Kurisu met in person. "

"You can’t know that!"

"Yeeeaah, I can... if you’d read her diary. She was jealous of a certain Mayuri, but she wanted you to be happy and stepped aside. "

"You read her diary?"

Maho blushes immediately. "I-I was given permission to do so! The first time I visited her room after she passed away her mother handed it to me so that I could read with my own eyes how… er,” she bites her lip, embarrassed, “how highly Kurisu thought of me.” Maho’s flustered gaze shifts towards the quickly changing landscape outside the car. 

Okabe shots a questioning glance to the elder woman. She and Kurisu had what to him looked like a wonderful friendship made of reciprocal respect and aspiration, so why would Maho feel the need to confirm what her junior thought of her?  
He considers the possibility of asking her, but quickly discards the option, feeling that he somewhat hasn’t the right to make such a personal question.

She breaks the silence.

“Th-that’s when I stumbled in your friend’s name!"

He grins, amused. Kurisu was just as easily flustered.

"You women are real demons."

§ 

He couldn’t sleep, that night. He continued to twist the small silver spoon in his hands, observing the glimmer of the metallic surface when hit by the moonlight filtering through the curtains. He started thinking. He thinks about how far he had gone without having anything that even resembled a plan. He thinks about how the woman had changed in his life in a span of few months. He thinks about Kurisu and about how much he wanted to see her in that moment.

A faint knock at the door of his room draws him away from his thoughts. "Uh, Okabe-san. Are you awake?"

Okabe opened the door to find himself in front of Maho Hiyajō in a nightgown and bedhead. Hesitantly, he lets her enter the room. 

"Did something happen, Hiyajō-san?"

"I couldn’t sleep, so I thought to tell you something rather than leave a message in the morning." 

Okabe looks at her, slightly squinting his eyes in the dim light of the room. Maho looks even younger, in that moment. "As you know, tomorrow morning I will have to go back to college due to an arrangement with Professor Leskinen, so I would like you to visit this place before taking the flight back tomorrow evening," she explains, handing him a piece of paper. On the crumpled surface, spelled in large western characters, there is an address along with the name of a place he had never heard of.

"What…?"

"It was Kurisu's favorite place. It’s a bit out of the way, but she liked going there to spend some time away from her workplace”, Maho said rising up and then looking into his eyes. "Okabe. As a scientist I shouldn’t say this, but... I really think you can bring her back. So do your best."

And, without saying another word, Hiyajō Maho smiles at him before disappearing behind the door of his room. 

Looking up the address on Deloodle Maps he finds out that place is an old motel which has been out of business for a few years. While the thought of Kurisu liking such a weird place is somewhat endearing, he can’t help but wonder how going there should help him save Kurisu.  
In the end he closes the app with a sigh,deciding that he’ll figure something out once he gets there.

Kurisu perhaps had never realized how lucky she had been to have had such a friend at her side, but he would remember to put a good word for Maho when he finally met the woman who had literally populated his dreams. Because he knew he would meet her.

With half a smile, Okabe brings the phone to his ear without calling anyone. "Yes, it’s me. When I’m coming to save you? Do not fret, the time has almost come. Who do you think I am? Listen! I am the insane mad scientist Hōōin Kyōma, and I never take back my word! So, for now, wait for me. I will release you from the chains of time that bind you. Yes, I promise. El. Psy. Kongroo.”

§

 

When Maho told him that the place was "a little out of the way," he expected a good half an hour of taxi ride, not a closed-off road in the middle of the desert.  
He sprints along the dusty path. The sun was falling low on the horizon, dying the sand dunes with gold and amaranth.

When an exhausted and sweaty Okabe finally makes it to the place indicated on the sheet, he finds an abandoned motel. Four rusty doors stand lined up on a common balcony just a few feet from the ground, reachable through a stairwell covered in sand.

He lets himself go, exhausted, against the dusty wall. He got there. What should he do now? Shout her name? It would be useless, but it doesn’t take away the fact that he no longer knows what he’s supposed to do. Did he expect that going to a place that Kurisu was fond of would have allowed him to see her again? He’s been drained of all the willpower that came to him mere minutes ago.

He shoves a hand in the pocket of his dark pants to pull out the small silver spoon, watching intently how the landscape is reflected and shrinks on its curved surface, creating a myriad of shadows and colors.

He would have liked to ask her what to do. 

Surely she would have given him the answer he was looking for. Mumbling shyly, her cheeks dusted red and that spark of curiosity in her pretty eyes, she’d expose one of her complicated theories as if it were the most natural thing in the world and God only knows how beautiful she would have been at that moment. The truth is, he misses a complete stranger so much it hurts.

He doesn’t even know why he does it. It’s an embarrassing gesture that probably is useless but he does it the same.

He takes the piece of silverware in his hands and, as if it were the most delicate and precious thing, he puts his lips to it. It’s cold. It does nothing.

Or so he thought.

For a moment, the world seems to stop. The wind starts to sing and his eyelids suddenly fight to keep themselves open. And then, it happens: a terrible headache, a pain so intense that that it feels like someone was ripping his skull apart, and new images flow in front of his eyes.

_“Happy tenth birthday, Kurisu! Here’s a little something from me,” the short man his forties with her same blue eyes exclaimed, handing over a carefully wrapped package to a red-haired girl smaller than her. She guessed it to be something light. "Other people say it helps gather happiness, a good omen."_

_Makise Kurisu's blue eyes shone of the purest of joys._

He’s caught by a violent vertigo, almost as if he’s falling into a void, sucked by a force equal to that of a black hole. A thin red thread leaps from the little finger of his left hand, extending to the infinitely-stretching space.

New images invade his mind.

_"Oooh, you look like a princess with that dress! Dad almost can’t believe you're eleven years old and... Oh? Did you bring me an essay to read? "_

_A father and her child were in study, the dim light touching their faces. Kurisu, in two adorable twintails and a pink dress, handed a series of sheets to Mr. Makise. On her face was the same fierce and embarrassed look Okabe loved so much."Yes, dad. It’s about those time machines you like talking about!", she explained, with the trademark pride of a kid who’s tried something out for the first time.._

_His eyes followed the paper word-by-word, and he couldn’t seem to bear it. In a span of such short time, his features distort and the fatherly smile is nowhere to be seen. A flash of anger and pain crosses Shōichi Makise's gaze and everything crumbled in one moment.  
"My own child, refuting my works… are you satisfied by this!?”. _

_Kurisu felt like her whole world was crumbling on itself, rejecting her very existence. As her heart was shattered Kurisu thought the no kid should have ever heard such words, especially from a parent._

* * *

_"Hey, isn’t that Kurisu Makise? She’s only 16, right?"_

_"Yes it's her. Got to some of the advanced courses, too.”_

_"I don’t like her. It always seems as if she’s looking down on you."_

_A tall professor clad in a brown suit announces her name in shoddy Japanese. "She'll work in our lab, from now on. Do not be fooled by her young age as she's a pretty capable young lady. "_

_The scientists of the a Brain Science Department of Victor Chondria University glare at the redhead, though she ignores them with surprising composure. She walks up the stage to the spot next to a childish-looking girl with long, unkempt black hair._

_"Don’t let it get to you", the girl reassures her with a kind smile. “They did the same to me when I started working here.”_

_"It’s a bit immature, coming from adults", Kurisu says indifferently._

_She gets a chuckle in response. A small, pale hand stretches towards her."Hiyajō Maho, nice to meet you."_

_She shakes it back._

He watches Kurisu in his body helping Mayuri and Rukako in their assignments and astonishing the commission at his math exam. Kurisu attending a cooking course trying to ignore the teasing from Maho - "Oh, Kurisu, is there someone special to whom you want to give these sweets?"-, and Kurisu writing "pervert" in capital letters on his forehead. 

And then, something completely new...

_"Excuse me, could you come with me for a moment?"_

_He watches Kurisu grab a tall lanky man by the sleeve and drag him out of what appears to be a conference room.  
"Oh I see. My mad scientist charm has struck you so much that you wanted to talk to me at all costs, isn’t it?” The eighteen-year-old gives a questioning look, then an exasperated sigh._

_"...Is this really how you’d want to start our first real conversation?”_

_The “mad scientist” drops the act._

_"Ah? What are you talking about? Do we know each other?"_  
Okabe Rintarō stares at her, with no hint of recognition in his eyes.  
Somehow Kurisu's gaze loses its brightness and he’s able to clearly read her thoughts just by looking into her eyes. 

_”Okabe… you really don’t remember?” Her voice cracks. Her hands form into clenched fists, expression unreadable as she lowers her gaze, chestnut hair concealing her face. “What game are you playing at?"_

_There’s an awkward silence in which all they can do is be at a standstill, until..._

_"Okarin, tutturu!~"_

_"Ah, Mayuri!" Okabe greets back. He sounds as if the interruption was very welcome._

_"Daru-kun called to tell us to reach him at May Queen, he said he forgot his wallet..."_

_"Ah, just a moment, I have to finish my chat with this admirer of the undersigned Hōōin..."_

_He turns back to resume their conversation…_

_...only to find the girl nowhere to be seen. Mayuri, oblivious as ever, asks what was wrong._

_Okabe helplessly sees Kurisu running down the stairs of the Radio Kaikan building with a wounded expression and a cellphone on her ear, murmuring “I shouldn’t have gone” and “...yeah, I’m going back earlier.”_

...It takes him a while to realize what this implied.

"Kurisu!", he tries to shout, but no sound escaped from his throat as he continued falling into the void, with the red thread twisting, turning and stretching. How could he have forgotten their encounter? Had he remembered her, maybe she wouldn’t have taken the flight that stripped her of her life. Had he known then how much she mattered to him...  
Fate was cruel in his own inevitability. It gave you what you wished for just to unexpectedly take it back in the most painful way.

* * *

_Kurisu is sitting on a royal bed in what looks like an hotel room. Her eyes are red and puffy, and she holds in her arms what he recognizes as an @channel mascot, squeezing it tightly against her chest before getting up with a frustrated sigh._

_“Just stop it! Get a hold of yourself, Makise Kurisu!” she reprimands stomping towards the mini fridge in a corner of the room._

_Okabe guesses she is upset about their earlier meeting and feels a pang of guilt stinging his heart. He would really like to apologize but he knows his voice won’t reach her no matter how much he screams. Although it wasn’t his fault their timelines were out of sync, he feels really bad for hurting her feelings that way._

_Kurisu picks a bottle of Dr.Pepper and chugs half of it in a couple of seconds. He can’t help but think that her getting so worked up even over her own behavior is somewhat endearing. He isn’t able to further develop the thought, because Kurisu suddenly becomes beet red, staring at the drink like it’s some kind of alien being._

_“This is not the time to think about trivial things such as indirect kisses!”, she sputters, talking to no one in particular._

_It takes a few moments for him to understand what Kurisu was thinking. He feels his face flare up as he wonders how her lips would taste._

_Suddenly the room warps and the image in front of his eyes shifts into a familiar setting._

_"Aaah! Stop it! You're an adult man, for God’s sake! What’s with all this crap talk about ‘the Organization’? Talking to you is embarrassing."_

_Kurisu is alone in her room, still wearing her lab coat and a strange expression on her face. From her words Okabe understands how her monologue is somehow directed to him._

_"And your sense of fashion is nonexistent! What color are those pants?! It looks like moss grew on them. You'd better wear the outfit I have prepared for you at the date."_

_Kurisu stops for a moment, breathes real hard, and sniffs. Feeling a pain in his chest, he has the intense desire to stretch his hand and caress her cheek, but he can’t seem to be in control of his own body._

_Oblivious, Kurisu goes on in between sobs. "In short, a dude who has no attractiveness like you could never be my type..."_

_Suddenly she falls on her knees, tears wetting her face and her hands trying to stop the sobs that were shaking her body. Okabe doesn’t really know what happened to her, but he feels his heart clenching now._

* * *

_"Then I'm going, senpai", Kurisu says taking her leave and pulling her suitcase behind her. "Have a good trip and remember to bring me some souvenirs from Japan", Maho wishes with a half-smile.  
"I will!"._

_"Let me know how things went with that guy!"_

_Kurisu suddenly blushes. "I-it’s not like I'm going to Japan for him..."_

_"Sure, sure. And yet I'm sure your father's conference isn’t the only reason why you're returning to Japan", Maho retorted with a grin._

_Kurisu heads the opposite way, heading towards the boarding tunnel with a cheek-reddened smile._

* * *

The bright and bustling airport shifts into a darker and definitely smaller room. His eyes take a few moments to adapt to the sudden change but soon a familiar silhouette takes shape in front of him.

_On a first class airplane seat Kurisu is sleeping peacefully, her long chestnut hair spread around her head like an halo. No sound is audible aside the quiet murmur of the plane engine and her even breathing. A polite voice announces that they’re flying above the Pacific Ocean and that they will land in Tokyo’s Narita Airport in 10 hours.  
The relaxing atmosphere of the flight is suddenly interrupted by a terrifying roar, followed by a violent shaking. Kurisu’s pretty blue eyes open as an alarmed expression is painted on her face and Okabe suddenly feels the urge of running towards her and take her away from that hell._

_Once again his body doesn’t react to his orders and Okabe curses his own powerlessness._

_When Kurisu realizes what is happening, it’s already too late: there are only darkness, a terrible impact and the frightening sensation of the freezing water in her lungs._

§

Okabe wakes up with a jolt, gasping for air. When his breath finally seems to take a more regular pace, he lets his gaze analyze his whereabouts.

Instead of the sandy dunes and the abandoned motel, in front of him there are pastel-colored walls. 

"Hey, I understand that yours are bigger than mine, but you don’t have to brag about it so shamelessly" someone mumbles.

He looks down. On the funny pink t-shirt he’s wearing is the familiar cascade of chestnut hair. Okabe looks at his hands cupping Kurisu Makise’s breasts.

It wasn’t his fault they were so soft.

"Hi-hiyajō-san, I can explain!"

"Huh? Since when you call me by last name? Are you sure you're okay? Did you eat something weird last night?"

Okabe gazes at Hiyajō Maho’s disheveled hair and sleepy expression and suddenly feels hope and relief overflow in his heart. If he’s back in Kurisu’s body this means that he might actually have a chance to save her. He knows it’s a gamble and that he needs to get Maho’s help to succeed, and hesitates a little.

"N-no, that is, I mean... I'm just, uh… happy to see you, Senpai!" 

Maho gave him a perplexed look and Okabe could swear he could sense the brain's synapses of the scientist working at full speed. "You’re clearly hiding something. Spit it out".

He shoots her a surprised look. Thanks to the time spent with her in the future Okabe knows that Maho is an extremely perceptive person, but the way she saw right through him with a single hint is almost otherworldly. Even so, he knows very well that, as a scientist, she’s a very rational person and that his own story is hardly believable.

"You wouldn’t even believe me if I tried to explain it."

"Try me."

He does exactly that, and it’s just like last time. She listens carefully to every word. Tells him she believes him. 

"Kurisu's flight is at 20.30 this evening, we must find a way to stop that plane," the scientist finally decrees with a mortally serious expression. Outside the window the sky is dark and shining with stars. The alarm clock on the bedside table informs him that he woke up at 3 in the morning.

He absentmindedly combs through Kurisu’s hair, taking comfort in her being alive as he feels her body with his own senses.

"I’d thought of that too, but there’s no way we can do it without it ending…” Okabe struggles to find the right words, and the ones he think of spells out Kurisu’s death too bluntly.

"Certainly we can’t call at the airport and tell the staff that there’s a bomb on the plane.”

Okabe looks at her as if he has seen the light for the first time. 

"Wait, I was joking."

"It may not stop the departure, but it may allow us to gain precious time", Okabe interrupts, feeling a desperate smile making its way on his face. 

It seems like it’s time to call out an old acquaintance. 

"Hiyajō-san, would you be able to build something that could distort my voice on the phone?"  
Maho Hiyajō looked at him for a moment, pondering. "I can prepare something simple, but it will take some time. What are you going to do in the meantime?".

Okabe smiles, looking at the sun at the zenith in the summer sky. "I'm going to meet Kurisu."

The first thing that Kurisu feels when she wakes up is, for the second time, pain. Her legs burn and ache at every movement, as if she had run the New York marathon without an ounce of workout and her back protested whenever she tried to get up.

In front of her only extended a dusty road and the immense dunes of a desert. A small grey building stands in the middle of nothing. The red spots of the bricks stand out on the old facade where the plaster went off and a set of 5 rusty doors looks out on a narrow balcony. Memories of this motel flood her mind, and she almost forgets her leg was cramping in the first place..

_...What am I doing here?_

The tremendous memory of her falling into void hits her as a violent vertigo and, for a moment, breathing becomes extremely difficult.

_I shouldn’t be here. No; I shouldn’t be period._

Yet she is there, in her favorite place, watching a magnificent sunset. There is no trace of living soul around. Kurisu’s pink convertible is nowhere to be seen. How did she get here?

The last rays of the sun are making their way through the gentle curves of the sandhills, tinging the sky of shades of blue, pink and orange whose existence she discovers only in that moment.

Kataware Doki. 

Pushing one of the doors of the motel’s rooms with her shoulder, the aged and rusty metal easily bends itself to the weight of Okabe’s body.  
The inside of the room is a pile of dust and debris, and Kurisu strongly hopes not to cross into unwanted guests.

She makes her way through the shadows, reaching the bathroom. The mirror over the rusty and chipped sink was preserved enough to show the shadow of her reflection, the image of a tall, too thin young man with messy black hair pulled back.

* * *

The taxi ride seems endless to him, even longer than the countless hours to America that seemed like forever. The taxi driver stops the car at the entrance of that road closed to the traffic that crosses the desert, in front of the transepts that block the passage, and, with a worried expression - probably wondering what a young girl was going to do in the middle of the desert - he asks if “she” was sure that that was her intended destination. Okabe nods, looking at the yellow car until it disappeared from his sight.

The sun is setting behind the horizon, and, before his brain could impart a true order, Kurisu's legs are rushing on the dusty asphalt. He stumbles in the cobblestones, tearing off part of her stockings and scraping her knee. He mentally excuses himself to his precious Christina, and thinks he’d have been granted a miracle if she somehow answers with a Christina-esque retort..

At the thought of that, he overworks the Genius Girl’s frame - has her run.

He runs, runs and runs until his lungs cry out for air and his legs protest. A voice in his head - in his heart - begs him to run, to hurry, until Okabe finally sees it: a black spot on the roadside with rusty doors and crumbling stairs, which keeps getting closer as he approaches.  
His stomach’s hurting and he feels the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, but for the moment, none of that matters. He clings to the rusty balustrade and screams with all the breath he had left.  
"Kurisu!”  
The wind sings as the last rays of sunshine are swallowed by the dunes. A glint of something blue flutters amidst the sunset sky. The butterfly fades as soon as it had appeared.

_Okabe?_

Okabe jolts up, scanning his surroundings searching for the voice’s owner.

"Kurisu!", he shouts again. "Kurisu, are you...".

"… there?".

It’s like a vision inside a dream, something he wouldn’t have believed if he wasn’t the one living it. Just a moment before he was looking at the most breathtaking sunset of his life in the body of his most important person, and now...

The realization is so sudden that words fail him: in a moment which seems out of the unstoppable flow of time, Kurisu is finally here with him.

As a silence full of expectation fills the air, Okabe takes in her figure as if it was the first time really seeing it. Her thin frame, her pale skin, the slight pout on her lips and the red dusted cheeks. Just the thought of Kurisu being real and alive in front of him seems too much to take.

His body seems to move on his own and, even before realizing it, he’s holding her in his arms. A small exclamation of surprise escapes her lips. 

“H-hey! W- what are you-”

Her body is warm and pulsating with life and Okabe finds himself tightening the embrace. With a trembling sigh Kurisu slowly returns the hug, her thin hands gripping the back of his labocoat.

"I thought I would never see you again."

"You wound me,” he replies with a fond smile, “I could never abandon my dear assistant."

Kurisu pulls away. "I'm not your-” she looks away, the scientist catching a glimpse of red on her cheeks, “-Ah, it's useless.”

Okabe thinks he must have waited his whole life just to live this moment. He would never have imagined that that strong and yet so frail woman would become so important to him. Since their first exchange Kurisu had become the center of his world, expanding it beyond limits he had never imagined he would cross. 

Kurisu, true to her tsundere act through and through, doesn’t look like she’s in the mood for sappy conversations. Her expression quickly turns into one of chastisement. 

"Even if you've come this far, you always remain a pervert. Don’t believe that Hiyajō-senpai didn’t tell me you have touched my breasts!"

Okabe feels his cheeks burn, but he still feels up to showing her a mischievous grin."You can’t touch something that doesn’t exist, hentai shōjo!"

"Shut up, pervert!"

"Look who’s talking, American virgi--”

A tug at his lab coat and the faint scent of citrus assails his nostrils.

His mind blanks out.

It’s just him, Kurisu and the dim light of the twilight that surrounds them, almost as if time had stopped. Her lips are soft and delicate against his own. Her hands tremble ever so slightly as she stands on her tiptoes. His heart is beating uncontrollably against his ribcage and Okabe finds himself wishing for this moment to last forever; for time to stay still. 

Though time is instead fleeting, as Kurisu just couldn’t stay still.

“...It’s not like I did this because I wanted”, Kurisu frantically says as soon as she distances her lips from his own. 

“You know, in “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind” the main characters have their memories of each other erased during sleep. In addition, intense experiences like, but not limited to, the first kiss remain imprinted in the hippocampus more easily and are therefore hard to forget”, she says in one breath as her voice grows soft. "... I didn’t want you to forget me."

Okabe smiles softly, his heart flooding with love. 

"It's such a shame, my dear Christina", he says, his voice full of feigned arrogance, as he sneaks an arm around Kurisu’s thin waist. “For this is not the first time a girl has fallen for my mad scientist charm and kissed these lips of mine”.

Kurisu opens her mouth with an indignant expression, only to be interrupted by Okabe, who gently moves a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Just a kiss", she grants, her gaze escaping his own for a moment just to get back to linger.

Their lips meet again. At first it’s as delicate as the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. That short contact, as to abide by the laws of the theory of chaos, sparks something bigger.

As Okabe’s hand softly caresses her cheek, it’s like their gravities are attracted to each other, their feelings overflowing in a moment suspended outside the space-time continuum.

§

"So...", Kurisu says tentatively after clearing her voice, not willing to look him in the eye. "That plane is about to crash into the ocean?"

"Yes, apparently, there will be an engine failure", Okabe answers bluntly.

"You know I'm not going to let innocent people die, thinking of saving me alone, don’t you?"

Okabe smiles, and Kurisu recalls her memories of Hōōin Kyōma, that idiot of a mad scientist who -for some absurd reason- she fell in love with. "I didn’t expect anything different from you, Christina. But you won’t be alone. Hiyajō-san knows everything and is currently working to help us. I'm sure you'll find the way to make it."

Kuris nods, and a long moment of silence interposes. "Kataware doki...".

"...Is about to end," Okabe finishes in her place, pulling out a red marker from the breast pocket of his coat. "Give me your hand."

"Eh?" Kurisu instantly asks, blushing.

"N-not like that,” he croaks, then explains his plan as he drags the tip of the pen on her pale skin. “Let’s make doubly sure.”

Kurisu nods eagerly, then takes the scientist's hand in hers. The ink has just begun to spell her name when the last ray of sun disappears behind the line of the horizon. And the redhead suddenly vanishes, the marker she was holding falling on the dusty floor as if there had never been anyone to hold it up in the first place.

Okabe looks up at the now dark sky, his heart already stinging with the pain of nostalgia.

_Kurisu, until the day we can meet again, all I have... I give it to you._

§

"Kurisu."

"Senpai."

The airport is crowded with people when she and Maho finally meet, just one hour before the scheduled time of departure of the flight. Maho looks at her with a quirked eyebrow, her skepticism being more than evident.

"You're back in you, I see."

"Yup. He... He managed to give me a second chance."

"I can tell," the older scientist comments with a smile. "Take this", she adds as she extends her closed palm, a cell phone in hand. "I installed an app that automatically changes the voice when making a call, but I don’t know what he was planning to do with it. The guy requested it."

Kurisu’s eyes light up with the sparkle of realization.

"I have an idea. But whatever I do... don’t laugh,” Kurisu mumbles, dragging Maho with her into the empty washroom. She takes a deep breath and presses the call button on the screen where the control tower phone number is shown.

Kurisu begins with boisterous superiority as soon as the handset from the other end is lifted. 

"Fufufufu... Fuahahahahah! Listen well, fools! My name is…”. Kurisu pauses, feeling lost for a moment. “...well, you need not know my name. But I am the insane mad scientist who will subvert the world's control structure. A bomb was placed on the 20.30 flight to Narita Airport, Tokyo. This... This is a warning. Do not fall into the Organization’s trap or innocent people will lose their lives."

Maho looks at her as if she has seen an alien being for a few moments before bursting into a heartfelt laugh, bringing Kurisu’s embarrassment beyond all possible limits. 

"A-anyway", Kurisu interrupted. "I need to ask you another favor."

§

"M-mom... D-dad... Wh-where are you? Mommy! Daddy!"

Had the situation not been dire, Kurisu would have forced herself to hold a laugh as she sees Maho whining in a surprisingly good imitation of a lost little girl.

As expected, the act bothers all the staff members surrounding the area of the boarding gate. People rush towards her older friend, offering to accompany her to the help desk to launch an announcement to her parents. In response, Maho starts wailing even louder than before, catalyzing the attention of everyone present to turn to her.

Taking advantage of the general distraction, Kurisu slips into the boarding passage. After a few meters, though, someone's voice starts yelling to stop, forcing her to break into a desperate run.

She shuffles in the hallway of the plane with a small thud and a pained ankle, hiding among the rows of seats to catch her breath. At the corner of her eye she catches sight of her goal, guarded by a hostess: the cockpit.  
As she tries to get up, using her arms to lift her body from the dusty moquette, a new stab of pain much more stronger than the first time forces her to look down. But to attract her attention wasn’t her ankle, already purplish and swollen; rather the words written with red ink on her right hand:

_I love you._

Surely it had been him, the insane mad scientist, but, as she tries to recall his name, something seems to be missing and, before she can realize it, her sight is blurred by tears.

It takes just a moment. She suddenly gets up, ignoring the piercing pain in her ankle, and runs desperately towards the cockpit, catching a bottle of Dr. Pepper from the beverages cart. 

The moment she barges in the small room, under the shocked eyes of the pilots, she empties the content of the bottle on the panels full of electronic devices, she almost feels at peace.

Her ankle is pulsating and the pain is strong enough to blur her sight. When the two men in the cockpit catch her it is too late: her legs give in and the world suddenly darkens.

A single, desperate thought seizes control of her mind.

_I can’t remember your name like this..._

 

§

Lately his life has taken a strange turn. Sometimes in the morning, when he wakes up, he finds himself in tears, victim of the feeling of having lost something extremely important.

Strange dreams invaded his nights but for some reason, he could never remember what happened in them. He goes on in his days driven by the desire to find something, someone unknown he knows would fill the otherwise monotonous picture of his life.

That street of Akihabara which runs along the palace of the radio is crowded as usual; people come and go in a hectic and incessant movement, moved by a purpose. Purpose… Okabe questions if he has one.  
A flash of chestnut hair distracts him from his thoughts, forcing him to stumble in the middle of the road almost as if he has just seen a ghost. The moment he turns very slowly he is forced to hold his tears in without knowing why.

A girl with chestnut hair and blue eyes looks at him with an expression that, he is sure, was the same of his own. Something about her attitude reminds him of a lost child, wandering aimlessly towards something undefined. He can tell because he’s the same, walking under the clear summer sky and looking for something that still hasn’t a name. That’s why, despite his shyness, he decides to talk to her. 

"Er, excuse me,” he begins hesitantly. "... I have the impression that I've already met you somewhere."

Any girl would have slapped him in the face, exchanging that innocent question for a terrible pick up line, but she doesn't. She cries and hesitantly answers his question.

"Oh, uh well... how curious; that's exactly what I thought."

“This must be the choice of…” Okabe catches himself using his mad scientist persona. “...ah, forget I said anything.”

For a long time they looked into each other’s eyes feeling the familiar sensation of time halting. And as they ask in purely-coincidental unison, they know they’ve found “it."

"What is... your name?"

**Author's Note:**

> I'm lazy, but sometimes I post snippets of my stories on my blog. So if you're curious about what I'm writing or you simply wanna say "hello" you can find me here: [@Feelstina](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/feelstina)


End file.
